


miscommunication

by orphan_account



Series: Merlin Random Writing/Drabble Series [17]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Fights, M/M, Marriage Proposal, Misunderstandings, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-23
Updated: 2015-04-23
Packaged: 2018-03-25 10:00:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,289
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3806296
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You don’t know what’s worse, the aftermath or the actual moment itself.</p>
            </blockquote>





	miscommunication

**Author's Note:**

> this is what happens when insomnia strikes again: put an old usb stick into someone else's computer and fiddle around with old, unfinished fics you thought you'd lost. might finish this one day.

You don’t know what’s worse, the aftermath or the actual moment itself.

Right now, there’s no competition; the aftermath wins, by miles. You idly ponder which of you is the better actor, Arthur or you. From the way Arthur rests his hand on the small of your back while Elena and Gawaine talk to you (which you feel like a burn on your skin, even through the fabric)—from the way he smirks and jokingly says he doesn’t want you to bathe him in red wine when he pours the same into your empty glass through dinner (which makes the wine taste horrid, then)—to the way he holds your jacket for you to slip in just as you leave, Morgana’s ever watchful, if glassy, eyes crinkling in a smile as she bids you goodbye—here, too, you think, it’s clearly Arthur who wins this, because your arms move clumsily, and your hands keep shaking.

There are minor slip-ups, as expected. Your relationship doesn’t exactly taste like strawberries with cream at the moment, after all. But they are _minor_ minor, not of the sort anyone would notice but you. And of course you do; your skin misses Arthur’s thumb stroking over it in circles with his hand on the small of your back. His touch is hot, your skin cold, almost as though your nerve receptors fail to function without it, the same way Arthur fails to function, keeping his fingers stiff and restless. Missing is Arthur’s glance at you when he sits down after pouring you wine, his glinting eyes teasingly saying he wouldn’t mind at all if you were to pay him back in a non-verbal way, later. And this time you leave Morgana’s place with the collar of your shirt wonky and your neck cold, because usually Arthur would scoff at your ‘baffling incompetence of clothing yourself’ and would smoothen the collar of your shirt, all proper, and settle the collar of your jacket straight over it, turning it up to keep you safe from the angry late November wind.

You watch, unseeingly, as the light from Morgana’s hallway disappears from the patio with Arthur’s strong hand shutting the door. The sudden absence of the sounds from this evening makes the weight already present in your stomach heavier. The silence stretches for a second, two—actually makes it to five, and a treacherous spark of hope tries to light the embers of your stomach before Arthur quenches it with his look.

“So,” he says, curtly. “You weren’t all that awful tonight.”

Apparently Arthur’s perception must be severely screwed; your hands are still shaking. You don’t dare to hide them in the pockets of your jacket, because Arthur would notice. His eyes, much like his voice, are flat and distanced and pin you to your place. You never believed it possible that anything would feel more freezing than early winter wind, but there you go. There’s a first for everything.

Still, you return the stare, even though the guilt is trying to eat away at the rigidity of your spine, trying to make it bend. You won’t. There’s no reason for a bad conscience, none at all.

In this thing between you two, this fight, this argument, or whatever it is, it won’t be you who’ll give in.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” you say, because you know how Arthur abhors it when you pretend to be stupid. It makes Arthur clench his jaw, which gives you a vindictive sense of happiness that falls flat.

Arthur’s stance straightens more than you think possible, and he pulls at the lapels of his coat in the manner you’ve seen him do when he finishes conferences or leaves his father’s home—all formal and proper. With this single movement of his hands, the wary line he has thrown up between the two of you grows in size and meaning. It transforms into a wall so high you cannot see where it ends at the top. Your throat feels dry.

“See that it stays that way,” is what he says in parting, clipped, and turns on his heel. His controlled staccato steps take him to your car, in which he disappears not a minute later.

You stay behind and stare after the receding backlights, for long, endless moments. In the back of your mind, there’s the question of where you’re going to go after this. You don’t know, really, because clearly there’s no place left, now. Not with Arthur disappearing in your— _his_ —car to leave you behind on the pavement in a cold night, going to the place you both called home until… a few seconds ago.

This doesn’t look like a fight or an argument; this looks like war.

_Right_ , you think, blinking when the first snow of the year begins to fall in soft flakes, brushing against the tip of your nose. _Right. So this is it._

For a moment you stupidly wonder whether you’re still alive from the way the cold burn transforms from a physical to an emotional shock on your barren inside.

You decide you don’t know, when you step onto the street, letting your trembling hands disappear into the pockets of your jacket, finally—when you turn the other way, force your legs into movement down the way Arthur has not taken.

Arthur’s won this one, definitely—by miles.

**

You end up at Gwen’s place. She finds you waiting for her at her doorstep and lets you in with a frown but asks no questions. She quietly leaves a large towel by the sink while you’re in the shower, trying to scrub away the coldness of waiting three hours for her outside in the snow. There's another sense of coldness in your chest, but it's one neither the scalding shower water can warm, nor a cup of rosehip tea or the soft kiss to your forehead when Gwen says goodnight.

In the morning you're leaving for the university before Gwen even wakes up, which is a feast in and of itself. You do so for several reasons. One: Gwen's a good friend, but she's never known when to keep her mouth shut, and you're really not ready for any kind of question. Two: you're a heavy sleeper and definitely not a morning person, but since you haven't slept a wink this night anyway, it's not really getting up and more a simple relocating. And, most importantly, three: there's no car and boyfriend waiting to take you to uni, so you have to figure out how to get there on your own, and how to do so on time.

You try not to think about how the force of relief upon finding a £20 in your wallet softens your knees and focus on getting your ticket instead. It's almost a fiver for a single ride and when you see the number on the screen of the ticket machine, there's a moment of utter blankness before it's ruthlessly swept away. £20 is all you have, which makes for four rides; two each day, back and forth, and that means you've barely got enough to arrange getting to work for two days, and not a single more. There's an intense wave of self-loathing crashing over you as you grit your teeth and feed the note into the machine—you can't believe that only last week you spent an entire £30 on over-priced, ridiculously-named but shamefully good coffee beverages, one almost a day at £4 the piece. If you hadn't indulged in those, you would've had enough money to get by another three days, which would’ve meant you would’ve lasted until the middle of next week. That would’ve been better than nothing.

Thoughts of food or hygiene and clothing don’t really keep you busy, since your pet issue has always more been money. As it is, you force yourself to stop thinking of the last note and bits of change left and passively watch strangers’ faces on the Tube. You get out at your stop and walk at a brisk pace up the alley to your faculty. You barely remember to smile at passing students as your thoughts hang themselves up on the blue scarf you left in the flat yesterday morning. You could really use it now; turning up your collar against the wind is only of so much use.

You make it through the morning by burying yourself in reading your students’ papers and signing them, too distracted to groan about Sara’s careless mistakes (knowing she could do by at least twenty per cent better if she only put her mind to it) or John’s atrocious spelling. You’re beyond grateful for the lock you had Gwaine install on your cabinet earlier this year. If you hadn’t, you would’ve had to head home to gather all the books and paper work. The thought makes you freeze, and you stare down at the ‘Medrawdian wars be’ you wrote down over the student’s line you crossed out. You re-read the sentence, but for the life of you, you can’t remember what you meant to write there.

It makes you scowl and you push yourself back in your office chair. Before you know what you’re doing you’re stoutly walking past the uni’s cafeteria and entering the professor’s lounge for the first time in months, squaring your shoulders against the stares coming your way. The coffee machine is free (of course it would be—that thing is the devil in disguise and has worn the name 'Mephisto' ever since you first used it, back when you still were wet behind the ears) and you school your face to show none of the disgust threatening to well up as you press the button for a black coffee. A bit of it finds its way out though; you can’t quite help the frown as you grudgingly reach for the cup. You sneak a look over your shoulder and find that some of your colleagues are back to what they were doing and a few of them are still staring at you. You flinch even as you only fill half of your mug with coffee and mumble, “Sorry,” as if any of your colleagues could actually see you doing that. You consciously avoid looking back this time, and, huffing, you grab five little tins of condensed milk and shove them into your pocket while you fill your palm with sachets of sugar. Back in your office you try to drown yourself in it with incredible determination and a perpetual grimace. The sleepiness will dwindle after a while, you’re convinced of that, even if it’s just more sugared milk (or milky sugar) with a dash of caffeine than proper coffee.

You take a deep breath when the caffeine still hasn’t hit after an hour and send up a wordless prayer for stamina. You work through the papers you should’ve corrected three days ago and have been meaning to give back tomorrow in class, if it hadn’t been for that... thing.

There’s a memory loitering at the edges of your consciousness. It’s just waiting for you to let your walls down so it could pull you under and render you useless for the rest of the day. You resist it with a clenching of your teeth, mutter, “I haven’t killed a bloody puppy,” and go back to work.

The afternoon draws itself out like the worst-tasting, most tenacious chewing gum and only reluctantly fades into evening. You notice the hour for the first time when you reach out for the table lamp and happen to glance, briefly, at your wall clock in passing but don’t mind much. The stack of papers thins, and that’s good—it is, if you’re being honest with yourself, more than you thought would happen at all. The second time you notice the hour comes more as a surprise and a shock as you startle awake when a hand is shaking your shoulder—you yelp, sitting up, and blink, sight hazy, at Gaius.

“‘choo donhere?” you ask, rubbing with the heel of your hand over your left eye.

“The question is, rather, what are _you_ doing here?” Gaius says, expectantly. When you don’t do anything but stare blearily up at him, he heaves the sigh of the long-suffering and reaches out, peeling a sheet of paper from your cheek.

“‘fanks,” you mumble. You straighten and push your back out, wincing at the grotesque popping of your spine. Pushing your hair out of your face you mean to ask “How late is it?” but just as you open your mouth a yawn intervenes to make it gibberish.

“If indeed that was an enquiry into the hour,” Gaius says, looking mildly appalled at being confronted with all your teeth, “I can assure you that you will fit well within the crowd of zombies, should they speak the same language as you.”

A look to the clock—you have to narrow your eyes and really focus in the dim light of your room—gives Gaius’ statement some sort of sense: it’s past midnight, well on its way to one o’clock. “ _Fuck_ ,” you say, feelingly, disregarding Gaius’ sigh at your language. “Fuck,” you repeat, reaching for the papers scattered all over the tabletop. You try to get them back some sort of order, frantically resorting. Gaius watches you wordlessly until you realise it’s just a waste of effort. You let your head bang against the table, gripping your hair and tugging at it.

“I promised them it’d be tomorrow,” you say in a panicked rush, eyes shut, “after I couldn’t make it Monday. Bugger, they’ll be so pissed at me, and it’s not like I don’t deserve it because this is twice I have to move them up now, and what the hell will they write on the evaluation sheet, God, I—”

“Merlin,” Gaius says, interrupting your hurried stream of words, and the way he says your name—so slowly and clearly and achingly familiar—is an instant soothe over the frenzy in your head. “From your reaction I would guess this night shift of yours has been neither intentional, nor desired. And I think you will want to strange yourself come morning if you destroy your students’ papers,” he adds, pulling the crinkled paper Merlin’s been clutching at out of his hand. He makes short work of the mess on your table, sweeping all papers together and putting them aside in a semi-ordered way. He shoves the pens and markers sprinkled all over besides the papers and then straightens, calmly looks down at you from where you’re lying with your cheek pressed against the table, staring back up at him through eyes forced wide open, feeling exhausted and frustrated.

“Way too late,” you moan when the silence stretches. “Way, way, way too bloody late.”

“Arthur will be thinking the same, I suppose,” Gaius says knowingly, his eyebrows doing the disturbing thing they like doing. “Wondering where his partner is at one in the night.”

It’s a known fact in your faculty that one Mr. Pendragon would come with the pout of pouts (“I do not pout, _Mer_ lin. It’s called glaring”), storming into your faculty to drag you home by the scruff of your neck, all the while complaining about your aversion to mobiles. You haven’t pulled an all-nighter in a while, though, knowing if you need to work through the night, Arthur prefers you safe and sound in your four walls where he can sleep on the sofa, waiting for you to finish up.

But now you merely give a grunt at Gaius’ comment. It’s not likely Arthur would be missing you right now. Would be missing you at all, really.

“I’ve stuff to do,” you say non-committally, toneless.

“Indeed,” Gaius murmurs, continues watching you in that unnerving way of his. You close your eyes against it and concentrate on your breathing. After a while Gaius sighs and says, “Go home, Merlin,” and you open your eyes in time to see him walk towards the door.

Before he is out of the room, though, you say, “Gaius?”

He turns to look over his shoulder at you. “Yes, Merlin?”

“Zombies?”

There’s a chuckle and a headshake. Gaius disappears with a dry “Don’t ask,” leaving you with a slight smile on your face.

**

You know you were right in your reasoning on not to go back to Gwen’s place that night, but that doesn’t mean you don’t regret it. It’s happened, every now and then, that you popped up at her doorstep in the middle of the night to ask for a one-day hideout when Arthur and you were having a bigger argument. Usually you would disappear after noon or so with an awkward grin because there would be make-up sex even more heated than the previous argument, and, on the odd occasion, even a flower or two on your pillow (about which you never, ever talked) or your favourite, sinfully expensive, nougat creme chocolates waiting on the dinner table. Arthur is complicated but not impossible to get along with (except for occasions such as this one, it seems) and you would always make up again a day later, because after seven years of being in a relationship the seams of your bodies had intertwined and disappeared inside each other until you could not tell where his skin started and yours began, anymore.

However, of those instants in which you were apart for two days or more there are few—few, but ones so noticeable every single one of your friends remembers them, even Uther. Unsure though you are about the current situation, you don’t want to make this something it’s… not. Or mighn’t be. True—after it happened Arthur left you without a word and vanished for the next three days without a trace and you met him again for the first time at Morgana’s party, at which he played pretend and left you behind so coldly—but it’s precisely for this reason after all you don’t want anyone involved. You’re not sure what this is, yet, but you know enough to say it’s not an argument but something resembling a war. One of a kind you haven’t had before.

So you wake up the second day on the old, small green leather couch you’re keeping in your office, sore and four hours sleep richer. It’s seven in the morning when you shuffle down the hallway into the men’s bathroom, every step hurting because even though you love Rosalie, she definitely isn’t the most comfortable couch around. You take a piss and scrub at your face with the rough loo paper, disregarding your pallid skin, red eyes and the thin blue circles underneath. The caretaker greets you with a cautious hello, and you realise you really haven’t pulled any night shifts in a long while because you don’t know this one. You still smile tightly in response and offer a weak wave, impossibly relieved when you close the office door behind you.

In a futile attempt to correct more papers you again fall asleep over the table and make it to your lecture fifteen minutes too late. You haven’t really been in the right mind the last two days and it’s only after your “Sorry, sorry, too late,” that you realise why the class is so eerily silent: they’re staring at you with open mouths, and only when you glance down do you see that you’re still wearing that awful blazer from two nights ago. You groan and dump your stuff on the table, hurrying to unbutton the monstrosity and throw it over the chair. That’s why you hate getting clothes as presents; because at point you’ll have to wear them around the person who gave it to you so they, like in Morgana’s case, can coo over you and tell you how chic you look while you pretend to be anything but miserable.

“So now that’s done with,” you say, trying to keep up a semblance of cheerfulness, “we’re going to wrap up Tuesday’s lecture with today’s and—”

“Merlin,” a student interrupts loudly. You still, already wary of the question, brain racing to come up with a believable excuse.

“Yeah?” It comes out a little stiff. You silently resent yourself for how, sometimes, you never know how to keep your private and professional lives separated.

“Why are you wearing that… that thing?” the boy asks and there’s at least a dozen heads nodding along. Someone else a few rows down pipes up with, “And where’ve you been Tuesday?” Not a moment later there’s, “And what about our papers?”

You don’t think about the sinking feeling in your stomach while you ignore the second question and concentrate instead on trying to explain that you haven’t suddenly decided to go ‘chic’ and that your infamous shirts will return for the next lesson. Your stomach has settled a bit by the time your students have forgiven you for messing up giving the papers back again—in return for you wearing their favourite shirt (‘so this Irishman walks out of a bar… no, really, it can happen!’) next time.

**

The stomach ache is back with vengeance bordering on cramps just in time for you to open the front door. Even though you know Arthur isn’t there you still sneak in as though you’re a burglar. You leave your shoes by the door and close it behind you before you walk slowly into the flat. You can’t help the way your eyes dart around, taking in anything that might potentially have changed over your absence of a day. The living room is unchanged; your shirts decorate the back of the dining chairs the way you left them, and the woollen blanket still lies forlornly on the carpet between the coffee table and the couch, just where you dropped it the morning you left the flat. It was yesterday only, you think, and you left the flat to disappear down the street in the morning mist thinking you would come back to it that night, perhaps even with Arthur in tow. You weren’t prepared, still aren’t, for Arthur leaving you behind so coldly.

Arthur’s been here, though, no doubt. His mug rests on the dining table, and the sight of it stirs something within you you don’t want to think about. Against your will you’re drawn to it, stumbling forward until your hip rests against the table. You take the mug within your hands and cradle it, softly, between your fingers. Your eyes trace the lettering of ‘What would King Arthur do?’, and even after three years of seeing the answering lettering on the other side of the mug almost every morning for breakfast, it still makes you smile.

“Be a prat,” you read aloud in a murmur, lips twitching at the familiar joke. The memories come rushing back unbidden as your gaze is stuck on the mug’s chipped colouring, and you remember how you gave this to Arthur as a joking housewarming gift. Arthur had scowled before catching you in a hard kiss and smirkingly telling you that he had it on good authority that prats were the best bed partners. After proving you that he’d indeed had it on good authority, the mug had found its home on the breakfast table.

Seeing it now after its absence of half a week makes your body react in paradoxes: your chest warms at the thought of Arthur not hating you as much as you thought he did (in your fantasies the mug always ended up broken into a thousand pieces) and instantly goes cold again thereafter—you didn’t see him use it, because he had breakfast without you here, because he left you on the pavement on a cold night clearly not wanting you back.

Your fingers shake as you set the mug down again, trying to rearrange it into the position you found it in, so Arthur wouldn’t know you had your fingers on it. God knows maybe then the mug would become best mates with the dustbin.

You close your eyes and breathe in deeply in order to recollect yourself. It’s no use dwelling on memories, because your reality from a week ago is not your reality of now. That’s also what you tell yourself when you stalk towards the bedroom, intent and resolute on getting this over with. You’ll get your knapsack, maybe your holdall, stuff some clothes and toiletries in there, a book or two and your iPod—

Your plan never unfolds. The sight of the bedroom freezes the very breath in your chest.

It’s exactly the way you left it.

The curtains are drawn. Their thick red fabric dips the walls of the room into a sombre claret, even with the overhead light on. It’s warm, almost stuffy, in here; you remember turning on the heating that Sunday morning, because you deem two weeks into November cold enough to warrant heating. You absently think about how the luxury of actually being able to afford heating has transformed you into a wastrel, which is a trait Arthur has actively encouraged, these last years. Your feet curl into the plush carpet as the warmth creeps through your socks into your toes, raising the hair at the back of your neck with a pleasant shiver. Arthur had had a floor heating system installed in the bedroom on the complaint of your cold feet giving him chills when you rubbed them against his legs over the nights; it’s true that your body is mostly always freezing, but you doubt you’d have the floor heating if Arthur hadn’t caught the dreamy look on your face when you’d stumbled across an exhibit of a flat entirely with floor heating.

The smile on your face is immediately wiped away as you are caught by the clothes strewn all over the floor. There’s your pyjama and your boxers along with Arthur’s bathrobe, and you remember throwing it there in haste. Helplessly, your eyes are drawn to the bed as you remember shoving the sheets aside so they hung half-way off the bed, the way they still do. The memory is an almost tactile thing, and you feel the phantom heat of Arthur’s skin under your palms now as you remember it, remember the moment, and that’s when you have to keep your knees from buckling by catching yourself with a hand on the door frame.

The memory overwhelms you with the force of a tidal wave, pulling you under.

**

_It was a Sunday, you remember. This fateful moment five days ago was on a Sunday._

_You woke up slowly, the pleasant sense of timelessness that comes with the knowledge of a free day ahead making you useless and idle. You took your time blinking your eyes open and indulged in the comfort you never had time to enjoy except for rare days such as this one: the comfort of Arthur’s chest against your back, the weight of his arm heavy on your belly, of his leg caught in the tangle of yours. Your eighth year of being in love, and you were still awash in the wonder of this man belonging, inexplicably, to you. The bone-deep knowledge of it made you smother your grin against your pillow. You had always been love’s fool, and it showed in the way your mind burst with stupid ideas: the red curtains transformed the sunlight pouring through the wide windows into something bright and sweet, and you had the vivid notion of Arthur and you sleeping in a field of Snow-White apples, ripe with the heat of summer._

_Of course, while the apple fragrant sticks on your bedside table might have helped along, they weren’t the reason you ended up whispering ridiculous things into Arthur’s ear. You couldn’t even curse the failed writer in you at the beautiful sight of sunlight laying gossamer on Arthur’s lashes._

_“I’ll make you breakfast,” you murmured quietly, the words causing your chin to move gently over Arthur’s neck. “I’ll make you breakfast in a field of apples, and we’ll sit on a blanket the colour of trees in spring. I’ll feed you grapes and watch the way your eyes will crinkle when you’ll smile at how I’ll get the juice all over my hand. You’ll call me stupid and I’ll call you a prat, but you’ll end up falling asleep on me anyway, and I’ll touch my fingers over your mouth stained from the blackberries I brought along. I’ll stay awake for as long as you sleep to watch over you, and when you have a bad dream I’ll kiss it from your mind. I’ll kiss all the bad things from your mind.”_

_And then, in the space of silent secrecy, a voice inside you said, I’ll do it forever, if you’ll have me._

_The thought made your heart swell to a heavy, throbbing ache within your chest, and you had to keep the burn in your eyes from becoming wetness by breathing light, controlled exhalations against the side of Arthur’s neck. It was too much too early on in the day, and a perfect reflection of Arthur in your life: he came too early and was too much, because your self had never been quite prepared to feel a love so consuming._

_You fled quickly from what you called the scene of crime in your head, because by God, if Arthur had been awake he’d given you hell for your mouth for at least a month._

_That didn’t keep you from returning with actual breakfast twenty minutes later, because you liked being an annoying twat and watching Arthur groan his way into wakefulness. Arthur followed his surliness by wrestling you into the sheets and threatening you with kisses filled with morning breath, which you never admitted you enjoyed despite the bad, stale taste. You grimaced and whinged about it anyway just to be contrary, but you knew the ‘punishment’ had been worth it when you saw Arthur’s grin soften into the hushed amazement he wore in those quiet, rare moments he believed himself unworthy of something. Arthur being Arthur failed in covering it up with a snort of, “My perfect wife,” his eyes fond._

_You being you failed in covering up your besotted grin entirely._

_The Sunday unfolded steadily before the two of you, and you spent the majority of the noon in bed, where you complained about Arthur’s smelly feet and he pushed them into your face. You moved into the living room eventually, because while it was a free day, Arthur was an almost compulsively clean person, and unfortunately it was your turn to hoover this week around. You sulked your way through it and threw a sock or two at Arthur’s face in passing. You hated hoovering with a passion, and it showed when you impatiently manhandled the spawn of hell down the hallway, back into the living room. You somehow managed to undress yourself throughout it, the handle of the machine somehow getting caught in your boxers, pulling them down your legs. You gave a yelp and let the thing fall down with a crash, and Arthur startled and turned to stare at you from where he was lazing around on the couch watching telly before bursting into laughter._

_Somewhere between eating Nutella from a spoon (gaining yourself a ‘must you really?’ look from Arthur) and arguing with Arthur that his childhood couldn’t be called a childhood because he hadn’t watched Pokémon, your feet complained of cold. You scampered off to look for socks and returned with mismatched ones, because more often than not you were too lazy to put your own socks together properly. You shoved your feet into Arthur’s lap. “Massage?”_

_“I’m not your servant, Merlin,” Arthur said in that snobbish, snotty way of his that you’d wanted to slap his face for repeatedly in the beginning before you’d realised all you actually wanted was for Arthur to fuck you stupid. The look Arthur favoured you with was the one that always made Gwen’s dog run from the room, and even though his mouth was an unimpressed line, his hands found your feet anyway._

_“You sure about that?” you shot back, grin wide and unrepentant, wiggling your toes against Arthur’s palm._

_Arthur’s retort was non-verbal. With one hand he held your ankle in a restraining grip and ever so slowly dragged his nails over the sole of your foot, watching you with a raised eyebrow._

_It had the desired result: you gave a shriek and made to jerk your foot away but only ended up ramming your other foot into Arthur’s stomach by accident._

_“You idiot!" Arthur gasped in pain, and soon you had him on you, holding you down and tickling you into submission. You yelled and screeched and laughed until you were almost crying. Arthur was breathless above you, eyes glinting with amusement._

_“Learned your lesson, Merlin?” he taunted, pinning your wrists with one hand._

_“Never.” You managed to sneak your leg up from between his and pressed the side of your knee cautiously but insistently against Arthur’s crotch. “What about you?” you asked in return, sweetly, pushing your knee further in. “Learned your lesson?”_

_Arthur’s nostrils flared at your daring. He stared down at you with an unreadable expression. “You wish,” he said at last. You could see the way the corners of his mouth now turned down slightly in a pained grimace, but he kept himself together. Before you knew what was going on he’d freed himself from the threat of your knee and had you turned on your stomach to kneel over you from behind, his weight and hand keeping you trapped._

_“You could’ve just said it,” he said smugly, bending over you, his low voice finding your ear with ease. There was no time to ask because he shifted his hips forward to press his groin against your arse. “You’ve never been shy before,” he murmured. “Why don’t you just ask me for it, Merlin? Ask me for my cock, if you want it so bad?”_

_The hand that followed his words trailed its way over your back before laying itself flat over your left arse cheek, palming and squeezing. It send a traitorous spark of arousal down your spine, and your neck felt hot already. “You wish,” you bit out instead._

_“No. I know,” Arthur said, and his natural sense of arrogant entitlement made the warm weight of his bulge against your backside suddenly feel amazing in an irritating way._

_The problem was, of course, that you knew that Arthur knew, and that it was true; true enough to be ridiculous, because at some point in seven years of companionship the intense pleasure of Arthur inside should have receded. As it was, it never had—he was still a familiar stretching burn when he found his way inside, but there was something that’d changed in those seven years that you’d come to love ardently: the manner in which Arthur’s bedroom philosophy of ‘hard and fast but gratifying’ from his young days had quietened somewhat._

_You still shared the frequent fuck of that variety, but during the years Arthur’s movements had become slower, less urgent; like now, when he took his time worrying your nipples with his mouth until they were prickled points of sweet pleasure that made you want to rub your thumbs over them in an attempt to soothe the feeling of tightness; when his thumbs traced the arches of your cheekbones; when his lips were soft on the thin skin of your eyelids._

_Arthur’s maturity showed in how he shared pleasure now, rather than taking and giving; he leant forward and let his mouth and tongue feast on your neck and groaned with the feeling of your sweaty skin on his hot tongue, instead of biting down like he used to, back then, to make you want him more. Arthur is still an overwhelming presence of breadth and strength above you, and even if he still silences your groan with his mouth and staves off your orgasm with a fist around the base of your cock to show you he’s the one in control, it’s more balanced now._

_More balanced now in the way that he, somewhere along the way, had allowed himself to show how his eyes softened with all the affection he held for you. How they reddened before they got wet, sometimes, when he stuttered out your name with all the wonder he kept locked up inside his chest, as if afraid someone would take it away from him. He was gentler now, as if it’d taken him time to grow into it, the way a flower took days, weeks, to blossom under the sun. He showed his appreciation for you more freely, lately, and the nights in which he’d murmured his love for you into your ear, sure in thinking you asleep, had become brighter with sunlight, such as when he’d look at you too intensely from where you were stumbling over your own shoes on your way out to uni, in the mornings—he would make his way over to you, grip your forearms tightly and place a kiss to your temple before telling you, quietly, that he loved you, while you stood in a rectangle of sunlight streaming in through the hallway window._

_You would never have thought the brash and arrogant clotpole you’d met capable of any of this._

_Certainly not of what then followed._

_He had you on your back and was between your legs, his strong hips circling a tantalising madness into the branches of your blood. You prostrated yourself before him with every inch of your skin, shamelessly exposed with your limbs stretched far from you to tangle around him as if having his cock inside you wasn’t enough; and it never really was, because when you allowed yourself to feel it, you were driven by a crazed sort of need to look up at and see the face of this golden, flawed man above you. You were all his to take, as you always were, because there wasn’t a part of you that was simply you anymore._

_He claimed you for himself and made you him, trying to quench your endless thirst of him with his tongue in your mouth. What had started out as an aggressive match for getting each other’s clothes off as quickly as possible had molten into something breathless, something wordless. The edgy energy driving the both of you before had gentled into something hushed, something secret that you shared with your eyes. Yours were fixed on Arthur’s relentlessly, because you were amazed by what you saw: Arthur’s pupils were large in their dilated state, pushing the blue to the rim in a way that made it seem bright and cool, like ice. They held a quality of confused reverence, as if Arthur couldn’t quite see, couldn’t quite understand what he had before him but was helpless to its pull anyway._

_At first, he gave himself over: allowed his emotions to show in the slackness of his mouth, the desperate line of his brows, the tremble of his hips as they kept moving. “Arthur,” you said, and when you said his name your own voice surprised you, because in your demented hunger it sounded like a growl. It seemed to tear Arthur out of his transfixed stupor, because he drew his eyes from your face and closed them. A shaky, flat sort of breath left his mouth. When he opened his eyes again he looked down to where you were joined, and, with his chin pressed against his chest, his hands found your ankles. He spread your legs by your ankles wide and easy and obscene, held them there as his gaze came back to you. You felt utterly exposed in the most brutal way possible. Before Arthur, you’d never realised having someone else know every corner and edge of your vulnerability could feel this beautiful._

_Arthur then knelt, and the sight of the muscles in those trunk-like thighs flexing with the movement made you groan and claw at the sheets. “All mine,” Arthur murmured. He wasn’t arrogant or possessive but merely observant; stating the truth as it presented itself to him, as he knew it to be true in his bones. “You’re all mine.”_

_And how could you answer with anything but yes? So you told him, “Yes,” as he guided one of your legs around his waist, told him, “Yes,” as he leant forward and raised your other leg to his shoulder to kiss you on the back of your knees, “Yes,” as his fingers shoved back the sock you were still wearing so the shape of his mouth could close around the bony nub of your ankle, “Yes,” as his hips sped up and found a desperate, irregular pace, making your hand claw at the bed sheet._

_“Merlin,” Arthur said, and stupidly you thought that you seemed to have infected Arthur; you only knew ‘yes,’ Arthur only knew your name. “Merlin,” he repeated, his breath hot and tickling your skin, and then his hips were out of control—they snapped forward, stuttered then pounded, crazy with it. You had to wrench your hand away from the sheet to place it flat against the headboard so Arthur wouldn’t bang your head into it the way he was shoving up your body with the force of his thrusts._

_Through eyes narrowed in pleasure you gazed at his face, at his hair tousled from sweat, his cheeks red from exertion. The proud curve of his strong jaw was clenched, locked tight against the nearing release. He was perfect in that moment, and you knew he didn’t even know, because deep down he’d always been insecure. You were compelled to let go of the headboard to strain forwards with your upper body on your elbows. You reached out with your fingers to brush your thumb over his upper lip, to wipe away the sweat there. It came away wet and you brought it to your own mouth to suck on it. There was nothing intentionally sexual about the gesture, only the need to taste him, to be even closer to him than you already were._

_Something seemed to break within Arthur at that, because he let your leg fall down and stretched himself out all over you. He supported himself with his elbows on either side of your shoulders and cupped your cheek in his hand, the pad of his thumb hot and dry as it dipped past your lower lip to feel the wet inside._

_“Merlin,” he said, hoarse, and the intonation in your name made it a question whose content neither of you knew yet. “Merlin.”_

_“Yes,” you said again. Your mouth moved with the word, and you felt Arthur’s heavy thumb ring just underneath the swell of your lower lip, the silver cold and smooth on your skin. You wondered, from a distance, what it looked like against your face, because Arthur stared at the sight like a man possessed; he stared for one second, two seconds, three and four, and then bit out a harsh-sounding “Fuck,” and ducked his face to the curved space where your shoulder met neck. He kept himself hidden there as he slid his thumb further inside, hooked it behind the row of your lower teeth, so you could feel his ring pressing flat and large against your lower lip. His mouth pressed down on your skin and he dragged his face down your shoulder until his forehead rested against your collarbone. He raised his face to look up from underneath his fringe then, his eyes wide and dark and unbelievable. He stared at you, and his gaze kept coming back to his ring against your mouth, and the breath that escaped him was wrenched from his throat. It was such a wrecked sound, pained and guttural and long._

_“Merlin,” he said, and his voice was hushed. There was something in this moment, something in Arthur’s voice and eyes, in his entire face, that made your chest seize up painfully, your heart skip a beat. “Merlin, please—”_

_“Yes, yes, yes,” you chanted, and it was the only word you could possibly say in answer to any of Arthur’s pleas._

_“Merlin—marry me,” Arthur choked out._

_So when your body decided to orgasm from the sweet, insane shock of those words, you were surprised and unsurprised both to hear the word your mouth stuttered was, “N-No.”_

**

Will’s eyes are boring into you, intrusive and unnerving. Like clockwork, it intensifies your eyes’ fascination with the table. With one hand you grip the glass before you hard while you’re sitting on the other. Finger-drumming on the table for ten minutes straight isn’t really a good antidote for anxiety, you found out.

“So,” Will says, for the third time. He waits for an answer.

“So,” is all you say in reply, for the first time. Will’s eyebrows quirk up and apparently he counts this two-letter answer as a success.

It makes your stomach churn. An okay Will is a talkative Will is a nosy one. You don’t do nosy. Not tonight.

“So,” he says again.

“Has that one pint limited to your vocabulary to ‘so’ or what’s going on with you?” you snap at last, too sharply to come across as just impatient. Will’s eyebrows wander up his forehead even more. You avert your gaze from him and wave for a waiter, asking for your third pint. Christ, you really need the bloody alcohol to start working in your system already.

Will is silent for a while, letting you stew in your sourness. Eventually he sighs and leans forward with his elbows on the table. “So,” he says, deliberately slowly just to spite you, “you hermit. What has prompted you to abandon your four walls to actually engage in human contact?”

You look up for the first time to find Will’s gaze. “Certainly not the prospect of seeing your miserable arse,” you say tonelessly, not feeling like teasing at all.

“Yeah, I know. If you’d wanted to see one you could’ve just looked into the mirror.”

“Touché,” you grunt, and you can’t help grudgingly raising your glass to toast Will. He isn’t right, of course, but he isn’t exactly wrong either. The thought just makes you wonder why you thought going out with him would be a good idea in the first place. You know the answer, of course, but you’re so not going down that road. You make a visible effort to pull yourself together; you straighten, huffing, and put your hands flat onto the table in an attempt to calm down. You clear your throat and force interest into your voice as you say, “How are things going?”

Will doesn’t answer immediately, taking his time. “... Fine,” he says at length, and you scoff. You’ve never known a worse liar, including yourself. It makes him scowl. “No, really, it’s fine. I mean, we can’t complain. The HMV on our street’s been open for what, three months? And we’re still in business. That’s the definition of ‘fine’ right there.”

You finger the rim of your glass, your fleeting attention fading rapidly with each of Will’s words until you’re staring at the table again. At a stain on the table, to be precise. “Well, that’s… good, I guess,” you say, a little stiffly.

“Yeah, it is.” He eyes you critically when the waiter returns with your beer. You don’t think about how you’re throwing out the last of your money in a pathetic attempt at forgetting and just take a deep swig instead.

“Hmmh,” you hum non-committally, wiping your mouth with the back of your hand. You don’t look at Will and focus on the stain on the table. It’s much more relaxing trying to find a name for the stain’s shape than to brave Will’s stare. His eyes are still on you (and you know a thousand questions are just waiting to spill from his lips) but you just tilt your head, hoping another angle will give you an idea. It won’t quite work; you still can’t decide between a penguin or a cat. “Hey,” you say, kicking Will’s shin under the table with a little too much force.

He yelps, his staring transforming into a glare. “What is it, nerd?”

“Getting old, that one,” you mutter at the nickname, rolling your eyes. You elbow him in the side and nod at the table. “What does that look like to you? Penguin or cat?” You purse your lips, considering, as you rub at the stain with your finger. “Well I guess if that end here comes off it’s a… particularly fat... stone?”

Will goes back to staring. For quite some time. Again, you’re aware of it (too aware of it), but you don’t care. You know the sight of you is the stuff for nightmares at the moment. Let him stare; you’re busy with the stain.

“Not to offend you or anything, mate...” It makes you huff out a sigh. No conversation ever ended well with that starting line, especially if it’s Will insisting he doesn’t want to offend anyone; his intention is usually the opposite. “I’m used to your freak-self, you know that, I mean I’ve known you for, what, twenty-three years now? Twenty-four? Anyway,” he says, waving a hand in the air. “Point is I know you’re _weird_ weird and not just normal weird, but it’s kinda hard for me to believe you dragged yourself out of your everlasting, oh so lovely marital-style bliss…”

Your chest grows hot from his words, because they hit too close to home this time. You know, instinctively, that Will is digging for a reaction, but you won’t give it to him. You know better than that, so you just tell yourself this is what you usually do, tease and banter, especially since Will specifically likes making jabs at yours and Arthur’s relationship. You hunch forward a little. It’s nothing more than that, right now. Only teasing and banter.

“...just to contemplate the shape of a random stain on a random table in a random pub,” Will finishes, looking at you meaningfully.

You look back just as meaningfully and school your face into the epitome of innocence. “Why, Will,” you say, mockingly, “has your working-class brain actually managed to attain the status of my superior one? Congratulation, you’ve unlocked the achievement ‘crack the nerd’s brain!’ You found me out! You know my plan!” You let your face fall and add, woefully, “Now all my scheming has been for nothing...”

There’s silence. Then Will says, feelingly, “Wow, I forget what an arsehole you can be.”

“It’s my pleasure to remind you.”

Will’s jaw clenches, but he continues calmly enough. “Slow down, cowboy.” You don’t like the way his eyes rest so focused on your face; the circles underneath your eyes feel much more pronounced that way, under his stare. “For all you’ve become a twat with a title, you’re still an idiot.”

“Am I, now.”

“Yeah. You are.”

“Enlighten me then, about my idiotic self.”

“Sure I will. I’ve got absolutely no problem proving something’s wrong with you, because you’re crap at this lying lark.” He sits up straighter and draws himself up as if preparing for business. “So first there’s the fact that you’re still wearing that blazer. You’ve called about having to wear it at Morgana’s party ‘cos she wanted to see you in it, and I clearly remember you moaning about how you had to wear it or Morgana would get you something worse next time. So why would you still be wearing it now, three days after?” He raises his eyebrows and the expression on his face screams ‘smarter than thou.’ Your fingers itch with the urge to punch Will. “I’ll tell you: it’s because you haven’t had the possibility to take it off since, and that’s probably because you haven’t been home.”

Good deduction. He’s got no proof, though. “Maybe I suddenly decided I like this sorta style,” you say, affecting a nonchalant air. You know it’s not working for you, but it’s all you can do, or else you’d react with the anger sitting seething and bubbling in your chest, and you can’t have that. You came out here to get drunk, and there’s no way you’ll let Will wreck your plans.

“And I know you haven’t been home,” Will continues, talking straight over you as if you haven’t said a word. He leans forward, talking lowly and with more emphasis than before, “Because, and now buckle your belt tight, Merlin: Arthur called me.”

Your mind draws a blank. You stare at Will, who stares unblinkingly back. You keep at it for a while, and then you choke out, “W-what? He did—what?”

“Yeah, mate, I know.” Will gravely nods along with his words. “Hard to believe, but there you are.”

“...He didn’t.”

“He did.”

“No, no he didn’t.”

“He did.”

“No, Arthur—Arthur can’t have— _he didn’t_ ,” you repeat stupidly. Arthur and Will aren’t exactly the best of mates, and the idea that… no way. The idea of it is so absurd it’s inconceivable.

Why would Arthur call Will anyway? To tell him he could take in your sorry arse because you’d fucked up? The thought makes ice spread in your guts, pushes nausea up your throat.

“Oh yes, he so diiid.” Wills draws out the word in a sarcastic sing-song, and he’s still looking at you. You don’t know if it’s the palpable patience in his gaze (a sight so wrong to behold), but it makes your face flush and your ears go hot.

“So, yeah, your loverboy called me,” Will says, leaning back against the bench, stretching his legs out in front of himself and clasping his hands together in his lap. You avert your face, wishing for a cap you could pull down to hide yourself from Will’s bloody persistent eyes. “We had a nice chit-chat. About the weather and things.”

“Will,” you mutter, the first bit of anger in your voice. Will knows he’s onto something—how can he not know, after Arthur bloody calling him, him of all people—and now that he’s got you here, he won’t let you go. The problem is that while he might mean well, he never knows when to let it go, never knows when to stop.

Will also doesn’t give a hoot. “After we talked about our favourite ice-cream we agreed on peace treaty,” he continues. Your head snaps up, and you can’t help but aim a lethal stare at Will, who’s a fucking wanker; he’s got nothing better to do than to counter your glare with a blithe smile. One that he keeps up for some seconds.

“Will,” you repeat, and there’s something about the way you intone his name, low and slow, that causes Will’s smile to disappear. It’s not enough to intimidate him fully, though.

“Nah, we didn’t,” Will says seriously then, as though there would have been any possibility for the scenario to actually have happened. He takes a deep gulp of his beer, and you try to calm yourself, try to unclench the death grip you have on your trousers. “What happened was,” Will starts again, “the tosser asked me if you were staying over at my place.”

You remain silent, not wanting to give him any more fodder against you.

“I told him no. Told him no, there was no hermit staying at my humble abode.”

“Hm.” You grab for the napkin on the table and begin abusing it in your lap.

“I asked him why he was asking. Asked him whether he didn’t know where you were. And then I laughed, because, hah, you going anywhere without him? Not likely. But he’s just as much of a stuck-up jerk as he always was. He told me to mind my place, told me I couldn’t talk to him that way. Bloody tosser. I just shot back ‘well why don’t you know where Merlin is’ and he went all upset cock on me—swear to you Merlin, I could see his comb standing,” he says with the slight tug of a grin to his mouth, and you freeze in the midst of tearing the napkin apart.

Oh, bugger. So that’s where this is going on. He thinks it’s Arthur’s fault.

Oh, blast it all, and bugger. Bugger!

“Will,” you try, cautious. You want to keep Will from telling you more, because just the idea of how his and Arthur’s conversation might have turned out is giving you an ulcer. “Will, I think—”

“Don’t ‘Will’ me, Merlin,” Will interrupts, suddenly angrily. “He kept asking me if I knew your whereabouts because you hadn’t been home in two days, and he obviously had no idea where you were. He was so desperate he decided to stoop down so low as to call me. So whatever it is that’s gone down, it must’ve been bad. Bad enough for you to disappear two days in a row, and now three. You’ve never been out three days before. Without him.”

“Will, that’s—”

“No, Merlin. Just—stop defending him, all right? You’re still wearing that blazer that you hate when you can’t stand being a day without your ridiculous shirts. You’ve never been more than two days away from Arthur, except for when one of you was on vacation or for that one time we don’t talk about. And you look like shit,” Will says frankly. As if to emphasise his words, his eyes wander over your face. You know what he sees: pallid skin and dark circles underneath eyes that are red from a severe lack of sleep. You know he’s right about you looking shit, but that doesn’t mean he’s right about…

“Long story short, it’s basically like the apocalypse. You certainly didn’t drag me out here for nothing. So. Spill.”

It’s true that you didn’t drag him out for nothing. You did it because you all but absconded your flat after the memory hit you as if you’d just run into a glass wall, and the idea of spending just one more night awake for as long as it would take your body to succumb to physical exhaustion simply wasn’t a riveting one. You feel like shit because you are shit, which is a paradox because you know you don’t have to feel like shit because you didn’t—you didn’t go anything wrong, did you?

Did you?

“Fuck this,” you mutter, but Will still hears you. He keeps staring at you, expectantly, and doesn’t even seem to register that you just don’t want to share this time around. You take another long pull from your beer and regret that it’s only your third, because that’s not how to get shitfaced.

“No, fuck Arthur,” Will snaps and slams his fist onto the table. “If he can’t even—”

You wince at the noise and the stares from other patrons now coming your way. “Will, it’s not…”

“Stop! Defending! Him!” Will keeps glaring at you as though he could make you look up from staring at your lap. “You never have any problem bitching about him, so why this show now? Why not just tell me how he fucked up, because he must have, because you’ve been—you’ve been tramping around somewhere, not at my place, and then that tosser calls to ask me where you are?” Will’s voice is steadily getting louder. He’s so fixated on working himself into a temper that he doesn’t even realise it. He’s taking deep breaths, cheeks ruddy, and then he’s already going on with his tirade. You want to curl in on yourself because you are caught in a multitude of emotions—gratefulness for his worry, anger at his insistence, pathetic hopefulness over the fact that Arthur called him to ask about you—but you can’t do anything except sit there and let Will’s words wash over you. “So stop pretending there’s nothing wrong, stop all this noble selfless bullshit, and spill! You’re not leaving until you haven’t told me, because I sure as hell am not gonna let you keep playing vagabond. If Arthur’s so intent on letting you do that, fine, but—”

“It’s not,” you begin to say, small, but you have no idea where the words are going. A sharp tug in your stomach stops you short. It’s not Arthur, you think then, for the first time in this mess, and the thought shocks your system in a way it shouldn’t because… deep down you’ve known that, haven’t you? You’ve known, but haven’t even had the guts to admit it to yourself. But it’s clear now, clear as day, when you listen to the aggressiveness in Will’s voice that’s directed all at Arthur’s person, because to Will it’s always been Arthur who’s fucked up.

Only, Arthur hasn’t fucked up this time, has he?

“Fuck,” you say, disbelievingly, and grimace from the way the guilt floods your guts, spreading fast, unstoppable. Your stomach is in knots, intent on trying to eat itself up. You put a hand on your belly as if that would help calm your body any, but to no avail. The shame and guilt rush through your blood relentlessly until you’re sick with it. The nausea is thick and bitter in your throat, and Will’s glower is only making it worse, because Will doesn’t understand. And he won’t, you think. He won’t, since he’s always been too focused on Arthur’s guilt.

“Fuck. Fuck,” you curse and shoot up from your seat so fast you bang your leg against the table’s edge. You scrabble for your bag, wildly, and bolt.


End file.
